Lecture 10-2

Media

Candidates and campaigns: The media as talent scouts

• The media have partly displaced political parties in providing political information to the public

• The media tend to view campaigns as “horse races,” more interested in who is ahead and who is behind than in differences among candidates on the issues.

• News coverage can become valuable free advertising, especially for candidates on tight budgets who are trying to increase their name recognition

Believability

• The public in inclined to believe that they read and hear and watch in the media

• Some television journalists are more “believable” than many other public figures and officials

Access

• The media need candidates and officials, just as politicians need the mass media.

• Journalists rely on candidates and officials for access to news and news sources

• Leaks

• Exclusives

• News releases

• Press conferences

• News briefings

• Backgrounders

• Visuals

• Photo opportunities

A right to know?

• While the press enjoys wide freedom to print news, there is not a corresponding obligation on the part of public officials to provide information to the press

• Access to ongoing military operations has become controversial

• Some believe the press undermined the public’s resolve to continue supporting the fighting in Vietnam.

The Journalists

• Media bias, to the extent that it exists, is personal and structural

• It results from the political attitudes of reporters and editors as well as from the nature of the news reporting business itself

• Journalists in the United Sates tend to be politically liberal and to vote Democratic

• News organization owners tend to be conservative and vote Republican

The Journalists cont

• there is also a widespread suspicion of politicians generally, regardless of party

• But other factors tend to compensate for a liberal bias

Deciding What Becomes News

• Selection of news stories is inevitable

• Major events and items of interest to journalists and readers/views will be obvious candidates for selection

• Economics plays a role, especially for television

Deciding What Becomes News cont

• The networks tend for favor Washington-based stories because the equipment is already there

• Within Washington, there is usually more coverage of the white house and certain executive department than Congress

Deciding How The News Appears

• The same events may be described in different ways

• Television prefers to emphasize the dramatic and visual parts of a story

• Media executives are very much aware of Nielsen rating and circulation figures

The Impact Of The Visual

• Television’s unique quality is its capacity to transmit action and images into virtually every home in the land simultaneously

• The visual becomes a factor in the selection of new stories and in deciding how they will appear

The Impact Of The Visual cont

• Television’s preference for action, which can be shown, influences how candidates now conduct their campaigns in an effort to achieve more time on the air during news programs

• The first Kennedy-Nixon debate of 1960 is a good example